A Rancid Anniversary of the WTO Protests

Halfway through Rancid's set at Seattle's DV8 on Thursday, guitarist and singer Lars Frederiksen played the opening lines to folk-rock singer Billy Bragg's "There Is Power in a Union." The song lead into a solo version of Rancid's "The War's End," which talks about Bragg in the line "went to his room and smashed his Billy Bragg record, didn't want him to hear that
communist lecture." The reference was reported to be in rememberance of both the World Trade Organization protests, as well as the ongoing strike by workers at Seattle's daily newspapers.